An archery bow has long been recognized as a weapon difficult to fire with consistent accuracy. Conventional firing calls for the archer to sight the target by aiming along the shaft of the arrow. Depending on where the arrow falls in relation to the target, the archer will compensate accordingly. Compensation may be required for such factors as distance, wind, speed or size of the target. Due to the extreme difficulty of making these compensations, the need for a device by which the archer may sight the target has been known for many years.
Various types of bow sight devices are known in the prior art purporting to fulfill this need. One type of known sight provides one or more fixed sighting points to be aligned with the target. In particular, devices have been provided which employ fiber optics or light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as sighting points. Both the LED and the fiber optic sights employ a bead sight or sighting pins providing a series of sighting points to form an illuminated sight pattern. However, the construction of many of these devices obstructs the archer's view of the target, and may require careful attention to determine which sighting point to utilize when the archer's attention is primarily focused on the target. Another problem especially acute when using an archery bow to hunt in little or no light, is that many such illuminated bow sights emit light in the direction of the prey which alerts the prey as to the presence of the archer. A further problem with single bead sight devices in particular, is the lack of means for lateral sighting in relation to the LED.
Another problem in the prior art is facilitating distance compensation. Those devices employing series of horizontal sighting pins facilitate distance sighting but only at discrete intervals. Such devices require that the archer manually adjust the sighting pins to gauge the distance to the target. Again, such a limitation is of critical importance to the hunter. The time spent in adjusting the sighting device may cause the archer to lose an irretrievable opportunity to fire upon the prey. Even should such adjustment of the sighting pins be unnecessary, exact distance sighting is available to the archer only at the location of any particular pin. Thus, should the prey locate at a relative position between two horizontal sighting pins, the archer must revert to approximating the distance variable.